Journey
by NJKaG3
Summary: Its not always about the destination, sometimes its about the Journey. This is the story about one such Journey where a certain Blonde war hero finally rises to achieve his dream.
1. Road-to-chunnin

**I do not own Naruto **

**Naruto's journey from when he returns home after the fourth Great War to becoming Hokage and having a family. We will see everything from promotion to Chunnin to Jounin to Sensei to another war and eventually Him having his own family and becoming Hokage. (Sequel Idea where Naruto is flung back in time with his new Wife to save the world) **

**Naru/Ino**

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**Chapter 1: Road to Chunnin**

Kakashi had just finished explaining to Naruto that unfortunately his strength wasn't enough to become Chunnin as he'd have to lead a team just as he would as Jounin and Hokage, and how Iruka would be helping him learn everything his past instructors denied him the opportunity to. He explained that if Naruto followed Iruka's teaching schedule to a T he would be able to be Chunnin within 12-15 months and Jounin in 24 he already had the strength he just needed the knowledge and that if he took on a team of his own possibly 2 then he'd be ready for the Hat.

Once that talk was over Naruto was sad he really wanted a promotion to catch up to his classmates in the Konoha 11 alas it was not to be just yet, but that didn't mean he was giving up no not Naruto Uzumaki he would never give up and never go back on his word for that was his ninja way and like the good ninja he is he brushed off the disappointment scarfed down his ramen and went off in search of Iruka to figure out where to start.

After meeting with his Old turned New sensei he was told he would start private lessons in a weeks time and in the meantime he was given a book on one handed seals and on Fuinjutsu for beginners to start his studies so that he could function with his singular arm for the time being until his Prosthetic was made.

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**1 month later **

Our favorite blonde had learned much in the past month, he had learned all the one handed seals and began to work on his seal speed he was at level 3 in sealing out of 20 for an Uzumaki Master, Iruka had caught him up on all his basic History, Math and science as well as reading and writing he missed in the academy through use of shadow clones he even gave him Sex Ed the right way not Jiraiya's version all in all Naruto had a firm grasp of the basics and was much more knowledgeable.

He decided to buy tri pronged Kunai like his dad used to use afterall he wanted to learn the Hiraishin one day and reasoned the more time he used them normally the easier it would be when he learned it. He also picked up a sword one handed or not he truly felt every ninja should know how to use a weapon so he decided he'd work on that and a trench knife for now, and with ROOT disbanded they found quite a bit of Danzo's notes on his Vacuum manipulation techniques and several Wind Jutsu that combined with scrolls Asuma left for him and he was gaining quite the arsenal and mastery over wind style.

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**Month 2**

Progress was coming fast and furious now he began sending shadow clones to the Nara residence to play Shogi and go with anyone and everyone that would give him a chance and playing it in the park with others at the shogi club when the Nara members were busy. Iruka was now pushing him through basic Chakra theory and strategy along with Politics and more advanced math and sciences.

On his own he worked hard to master the many Jutsu he had to a point they required between 1-5 hand seals, he was also now at level 5 in Fuinjutsu and began furthing his Kenjutsu skills and Bukijutsu along with gathering more chakra paper to discover his second affinity which he discovered was Earth so he began on the exercises for his nature affinity.

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**Month 3**

Naruto has the month off with Iruka as he was on vacation with his new girlfriend Anko, knowing that Naruto continued his training program moving on to level 8 on Fuinjutsu and continuing improving his Tai, Ken, and Bukijutsu skills while moving on to stage 2 elemental manipulation for Earth and buying chakra weights for his legs and chest to work on his speed.

He also sent clones to the public library to learn about Gardening and Cooking as well as Hunting and Skinning animals and gathering food from the surrounding area. Naruto also spent a great deal of time with various friends from the Konoha 11 and Ayame and Teuchi at Ichiraku's

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**Month 4**

Iruka got back and the pair buckled down for a month knowing Naruto was getting his Prosthetic next month and he would be solely dedicating his time to adapting to the new limb and testing its capabilities. They delved into more history and classic literature as well as his writing skills and Kanji writing with Math and Science thrown in and now on to advanced chakra theory.

In his own personal training he finally mastered his Earth element and began scouring the Shinobi library for scrolls and summoning Ma and Pa to check if Jiraiya left any scrolls for his Earth techniques or hair Jutsu which thankfully he did. The blonde also took up joining Rock Lee for training every morning and started to understand what they meant by flames of youth though he wasn't nearly as bad as them, during his time with Lee he had also ran into TenTen and she started helping him with kenjutsu and Bukijutsu all the while silently fuming that he was already at her level in Fuinjutsu already level 10 and he didn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

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**Month 5**

He received his new Arm made entirely of Hashirama's cells and Tissue they bonded the arm entirely to his body chakra system included it was a total success partially thanks to the fox a week later he was back training. The first thing he did curious knowing the Arm had the cells of the Shodai was to check his affinity again and was shocked to find his Wind, Water and Earth were dead equal not to mention a small flower grew from the paper itself, his eyes bugged out. "M..M..Mok...Mokuton!?!?!?" He was stuttering he knew it was a possibility be he highly doubted that it would actually happen it was at this point he ran to Tsunade.

Reaching the new Senju compound he banged on the door like a man possessed "BAACHAN" **bang bang bang **"BAACHAN!!" **Bang bang bang **"SHIZUNENEE!" Eventually Tsunade ran to the door disheveled and tired "What the hell do you want Gaki it's 5am?"

Instead of telling her he held up the chakra paper with his arm he was born with and pumped chakra into the paper getting the same result and causing Tsunade's eyes to bug out and feint. "Mokuton?" Shizune asked when she to walked to the door and looked, Naruto nodded dumbly.

"I had the weirdest dream the Gaki he had Mokuton but that's just crazy right no Prosthetic no matter how good my skills could do that right?" Tsunade kept mumbling to herself until she looked up and saw Naruto still holding the chakra paper "of course you would Gaki why doesn't anything normal ever happen to you?"

Naruto shrugged and was dragged off to tell Kakashi and get ahold of Tenzo for training and also getting a bunch of scrolls from Tsunade that belonged to her grandfather.

He spent the rest of the month mastering his water affinity devoting all his clones to that while he kept attending training with Lee and TenTen.

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**Month 6**

He got back to his usual strategy lessons and shogi with the Nara's and class work with Iruka while raiding the civilian and Shinobi library with clones to learn as much knowledge as possible. He continued working on his Water and Earth until he could keep them all to 1-5 seals and all one handed still while furthing his weapons training and now being a level 15 Fuinjutsu user he placed his own Gravity and Resistance seals with the weights to increase his speed even more.

He asked Lee to learn Goken and asked Hinata to learn a bit of basic Juuken from her and Neji while he found a scroll on the Hummingbird style. He had no real kenjutsu style he just learned bits and pieces of different styles whatever worked and his own improv skills.

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**Month 7-12**

Naruto kept training everything he already knew until he had mastered Fuinjutsu fully at level 20 and he could finally begin working on the Hiraishin and space time absorption barrier and other barriers. He had come to a point where he had mastered Kenjutsu to an acceptable degree and had a decent grasp of all his Taijutsu styles and a vast arsenal of Jutsu and he even beat Shikamaru 1 time at shogi granted it was 1 of 483 matches but still he was the only one besides his late father to beat him.

In his final month Tenzo started teaching him the basics of Mokuton having him pump the chakra into the ground to force plants to grow then receding it over and over until he could easily mould the chakra required to perform Mokuton Jutsu then they moved on to the 2nd Nature manipulation for it. When he got to the second exercise he was terrified this task was daunting he had to find a tree and use his chakra to cause it to shrink down to a sapling and then regrow it entirely before his final exercise which was to grow trees in the middle of a lake and the side of a waterfall once mastered he could begin to learn Jutsu.

The final day of this year he entered the Hokage's office to see a smiling Kakashi "Well Naruto you got a 93 on your test and you've grown quite a bit it is with great joy I hereby promote you to Chunnin" he tossed Naruto a scroll containing his flak jacket a tanto, ninja tools and his updated registration. "Your next step is complete you'll only meet Iruka once a month to go over much more advanced topics while you get a taste of leadership we will be sending you on missions as team leader and in 1 years time provided you are up to snuff we will promote you to Jounin"

"YATTA!" Screamed the Blonde Uzumaki before barreling out the door to buy some new clothes to go with his new uniform and then drag Iruka and Tsunade to Ichirakus to celebrate.

**End of chapter **


	2. On-to-Jounin

**Chapter 2: Road to Jounin**

Our favorite Knucklehead was wandering down the streets of Konoha feeling amazing, he had recently finally been promoted to Chunnin and bought himself some new clothes. He now wore black Shinobi sandals with ANBU style pants and Kunai and Shuriken holsters tied to his legs with orange tape he tied his forehead protector around his waist like a belt and up top wore a red sleeveless muscle shirt with his Chunnin vest on top to finish it off he had a red cloak with orange flames along the bottom that had sage in Kanji down the back and a Wakizashi strapped horizontally across his back through his belt.

It had been 3 days since he bought his new clothes and celebrated his promotion with his Father figure and Surrogate Grandmother, but today he had to pick up his training again but first he had to find Iruka and figure out the plan for this year.

"Iruka-sensei is that you?" The Uzumaki asked turning the corner and spotting his target walking down the street with his Girlfriend. Iruka spun around "Naruto? Hey what's up?"

"I was curious sensei I know the next classes with you don't start till next week but I wondered what we were going over so I don't cover it twice?" This statement shocked Iruka normally the blonde didn't think that far ahead, that thought brought a smile to his face clearly the lessons were paying off "No problem Ruto we are going to go over Advanced chakra theory some more and then some advanced medical theory I have just recently learned myself to teach battlefield medicine to the students before they graduate after that we will probably get to some higher level stuff normally only covered by RD and scholars basically we will discuss modern theories on science and how the very world works and go over more complicated physics problems, possibly we even have you teach a few of my classes to work on public speaking and finish the year with laws and procedures of the village as well as politics" Naruto's eyes bulged hearing the list but he caught on this was basically Hokage 101 that's what Kakashi was doing grooming him to take over as fast as possible.

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**Month 1**

He now added arm weights and continued Lee's psychotic training from Hell each day, while sparring with TenTen and Hinata and any of his old friends he came across. He would say his Kenjutsu now was at least close to Elite Jounin level he could keep up with Yugao whenever he sparred with her.

Tenzo began going over the beginner Mokuton techniques like the Wood clone and wood locking wall and wooden tentacles, he refused to move on until Naruto had mastered them to a degree he could use 1 or 0 hand seals they were the most basic Mokuton techniques after all and Naruto was far more powerful in that regard then even Tenzo though no one knew why.

Iruka kept working the blonde to the bone and he kept being shocked as Naruto absorbed it as fast as Iruka could throw it at him. Konoha's resident sage had also gotten half way through breaking down the Hiraishin seal and had lately been practicing with Kurama quite a bit to not get rusty when he learned the fox had a fire affinity which Naruto inherited only when using his Kurama mode. So the blonde began the nature manipulation exercises without the cloak figuring if he could master them without it then it would only be easier with it.

During this month he'd also taken on about 4 missions as Chunnin squad leader all B rank bandit extermination missions he had a perfect record, sadly though he did have to get over his first kill up until this point he'd only taken on Edo Tensei or Zetsu plant people never an actual human that he Killed so that was hard for the blonde it only made him desire peace even more.

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**Month 2 **

"Yatta! I did it!" Could be heard all over the village reason being 1000 Naruto clones had been working on deciphering the last bit of the Hiraishin formula by reading over every single bit of info on Fuinjutsu in the village and comparing it to copies of the original seal Naruto made.

"There is 5 parts to the seal the first is a blood seal basically homing into the targets blood so it only works for that person otherwise anyone who was a decent sensor would sense the becon and flash to it, the second part opened a space time bridge and the 3rd focuses on forcing the user through the bridge and out the other side while the 4th focuses on speed of the transfer and the 5th oddly enough was simply a two part seal array that further tuned it to the users chakra and affinity while determining the color" he said out loud to no one in particular "I'm definitely going to make it red I figure the technique is dad and the color mom it just works but maybe I can tweak the speed seal and make this even faster" he kept talking to himself as the day went on before getting to work on his own variant seal.

He training continued for the rest of the month as before but the missions picked up 5 more B ranked missions this time 2 search and rescue and 3 escort missions he also had 1 A rank this month to track and assassinate a missing nin.

Classes continued and he kept growing smarter and smarter each day even to the point of being even in shogi with Shikamaru this month 15-15.

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**Month 3**

He spent the entire month swamped in missions 10B rank and 5 more A ranks and tons of physical training he also finally managed to rework his own iteration of the Hiraishin seal and began applying them to Kunai his Hope was that he could finally be a Kage level Shinobi without the Kyuubi chakra and far beyond that with it.

As much progress as he made in his career this month he was proud of none of his accomplishments as much as he was that he now had a winning record against Shika 20-14 Naruto was improving his mind in leaps and bounds and it was almost terrifying to some most wondered why now. They knew he was sabotaged at the academy yeah but his current rate of growth was nothing short of inhuman, he knew however he had asked Kurama about it and the fox explained it seeing as he wasn't giving his chakra willingly most of Naruto's life instead the seal merely took it which is why it was corrosive and poisonous to him and it stunted his physical and mental growth but over time as he grew to respect Naruto he didn't fight it as much and that's when the Blonde hit his growth spurt and now that they were perfectly in sync his Uzumaki healing fixed much of the damage to his brain and his massive chakra levels supercharged it.

At this point he had mastered Juuken to the level of a Huga though sadly he couldn't shut pressure points down thanks to lack of a Byakugan, he could open 5 of the 8 gates and had almost mastered Goken and was about halfway through mastery of the Hummingbird style once done he planned on combining bits and pieces of the styles into one. His classes with Iruka were fewer and fewer as he had far surpassed Iruka's expectations and he was quickly running out of things to teach the Blonde leaving Naruto to resort to the civilian library some more and the Chunnin section of the Shinobi library.

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**Month 4-8**

Naruto began summoning the Toads to learn their unique techniques and further his senjutsu training. He also began on mastering the Hiraishin with his Kunai now ready and learning to apply the seal to others with merely his chakra, he had finally ran out of things for Iruka to teach him and so he sought out Tsunade to learn as many medical techniques as he could with his damn near perfect control he showed by sharing his chakra during the war he should be able to do quite a bit.

Tenzo finally allowed him to move on to the more mid level techniques in Mokuton and once again required him to master it to a point of only using 5-10 seals no more. Tenzo also started teaching the Blonde the ANBU Taijutsu and Kenjutsu styles and discussing methods of capture and detainment. The training with Tenzo spurred Naruto to seek out Anko to learn about TI and that had proved fruitful in his missions to come.

Again he had many missions 15C rank 35B rank and 20A rank the time was fast approaching where he would be promoted and the Blonde couldn't be happier he would be another step closer to Hokage.

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**Month 9-12 **

To finish the year he took a break from missions for a month and spammed his clones to finish his training with Tsunade up to a class 4 battlefield medic for comparison Tsunade was class 7 certified Field/Diagnostic Medic meaning battlefield or Hospital and Sakura as a level 6 but Naruto knew with his reserves this was his limit even with his level control it wouldn't matter like Genjutsu it just wasn't possible to move forward speaking of Genjutsu he had worked hard and developed his skills to break any Genjutsu up to A and S rank and learned the only one he could for his reserves the **Bringer Of Darkness Jutsu. **

Beyond that he finished training with Tenzo by learning the last Technique the ex Root operative could do **Hokage style sixty year old technique: tenth edict enlightenment** beyond that technique Tenzo never knew much else as he wasn't a Sage and the more powerful wood style techniques required either that or massive reserves as such Naruto opened the scroll he got from Tsunade and began working on the stronger Techniques of Mokuton.

Finally after an entire year he had mastered all the Gates and Goken as well as the Hummingbird style and began working on how to combine the speed of the Hummingbird with the power of Goken and precision of Juuken. The Hiraishin came soon after finally mastering it to a level comparable to his father and mastering his fire manipulation and several Jutsu for it to use both in and out of Kurama mode, as a spur of the moment decision he decided to work on lightning manipulation for the rest of the year and managed to get up to the 2nd of 3 stages of the training and could use up to B level techniques which was fine for now.

Again though his favorite accomplishment was now firmly handing Shikamaru his ass on a silver platter every time they played Shogi winning an impressive 40-3 over the last few months its with all that being said he made his way to the Hokage's office after being summoned he entered and saw Kakashi sitting at his desk giving one of those creepy ass eye smiles. "Yo" was all the Kage had to say with a wave and motioning for Naruto to sit "Well Blonde I believe it is safe to say you surpassed all of our expectations and even without Kurama I feel safe saying you're the strongest Ninja in the Elemental nations and with him" the silver haired Kage shuttered "You're likely Kaguya's equal now but power isn't everything you need more experience so that being said Congratulations on your promotion to Elit Jounin of the village hidden in the leaves" He chucked a scroll at Naruto just like last year the Blonde caught it smiling so big his face threatened to split in half.

"Now if you want to become Hokage you have one last challenge to train your own team, I did it Sarutobi did it Minato-sensei and the Shodai and Nidaime and in a way even Tsunade with Sakura and Shizune as well as Ino and a few others. I'm not going to give you one year to get to ANBU and to do that you must complete 75A rank and 10S rank after that you must serve one year in ANBU then you'll get to pick your team once they make Jounin the Hat is yours" Truthfully Kakashi wanted to hand it to him now but he didn't want to do a disservice to his predicessors by fast tracking him he needed to do this the right way for the sake of the village and for Naruto himself.

"Thanks sensei I appreciate your faith in me oh and sensei I was considering picking up the Icha Icha series for Jiraiya he'd want it to continue but I'll do it under a pen name I'm thinking Yahiko Konari and I'll let you be my first editor but you have to teach me the Chidor and Raikiri I want to see if I can use it with sage mode like you can with sharingan thanks to my sensory abilities" the blonde smiled triumphant when he saw his sensei's eyes widen before schooling his features.

"If you finish the last step of lightning manipulation I'll attempt to teach you but with it not being your primary affinity I'm not sure if you'll be able to use it like I do" Naruto nodded and left the office once again to celebrate with some ramen.

**Chapter end**


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